


My Heart Stumbles on Things I Don't Know

by casfallsinlove



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (by which i mean i try and fail to be funny), 8x23 coda, Angst, Domestic Castiel, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 19:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casfallsinlove/pseuds/casfallsinlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which it transpires that Cas is a grumpy little shit, and Dean may have many virtues, but patience isn't one of them.</p>
<p>Sam… well, Sam just sighs a lot and tries to stay out of the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Heart Stumbles on Things I Don't Know

**Author's Note:**

> For [Grace](http://mish-ackles.tumblr.com/), who is my sunshine heart and asked for domestic Deancas but gets this rambling mess instead.
> 
> Title from Mumford and Sons 'Awake My Soul'. 
> 
> Also published on [tumblr](http://mcpadalackles.tumblr.com/tagged/my-fic).

Cas, it transpires, is a grumpy little shit.

And Dean may have many virtues, but patience isn't one of them.

Sam… well, Sam just sighs a lot and tries to stay out of the way.

-

Much to Dean's surprise, Cas takes to domesticity pretty damn well. Like a duck to water, in fact, or Martha Stewart to a well-stocked kitchen.

Most of the time, this ain't so bad. Dude tidies up and stuff, organizes their books into a more orderly fashion, recycles the old papers and food crap they leave lying around. Which, y'know, all needs doing.

But on the other hand… He _cleans_ all the damn time, and he rearranges all their books into some damn _system_ that only makes sense to him and Sam and Kevin because they're a load of fucking nerds, and he installs these lameass multicoloured recycling bins in the kitchen and _oh god_ it's driving Dean to the brink of madness.

Now, it's not like Dean's an especially messy guy. He never has been. You don't get much of an opportunity to be a slob when you spend your whole life on the road. But occasionally he likes to put his feet up on the table, boots 'n all, while he reads or researches or whatever.

Only now, _now,_ Cas comes bustling over like he's got a sixth sense for Dean messing up the bunker and swats at his feet until they're on the floor again. It's like living with some prissy maid, he thinks, and says as much to his brother and Cas the tenth time this happens.

"It's like living with some prissy maid! If I wanna put my feet up, I'm damn well gonna put my feet up!"

At this point Sam slinks away, but Dean catches the smirk and is gonna pound on his little brother later.

"Then at least remove your boots!" Cas demands, hands on hips and eyes narrowed in a disturbingly smitey kinda way.

"Fucking well remove _your_ boots," he mutters mutinously, but bends down to tug at the laces all the same. "There!" he declares, wriggling his socked toes obnoxiously. "Happy now?!"

Cas wrinkles his nose, and it would be sort of endearing if he didn't look like he was sucking lemons, as he says, "Not really; these are disgusting. I shall put them by the door."

"What the hell, man! What if there was an emergency? I'm just supposed to fight demons in my damn _socks_?!"

The look on Cas's face screams 'bitch, please' as he gingerly picks up Dean's boots and carries them away, murmuring, "I wouldn't worry. I'm sure the smell will drive them away first."

Then there's the day he wakes up at the asscrack of dawn (read: 11am) to monstrous whirring and whooshing and banging noises and spends a whole minute convinced that the bunker is falling down around him. Still in his pyjamas and robe, he rushes from his room and skids to a halt when he sees Cas in the hallway, frowning at a vacuum cleaner as he attempts to untangle his legs from the hose.

Cas. Once upon a time honest-to-goodness Angel of Lord Castiel. Hoovering.

While Dean's sleep-addled brain tries to comprehend what he sees before him, Cas looks up at him and says tartly, "I shall be coming to do your room in a moment so I hope anything undesirable is removed from the floor."

Dean's never even seen this vacuum cleaner in his life, wonders where the hell Cas got it from, but is too stunned to do much but retreat back to his bed and sit on the covers in shock as Cas clatters his way in with the damn thing.

There's a lot of thudding and knocking and tangling of wires and ineffectual pushing around of dust, but to his credit Cas is really careful with Dean's stuff, has an admiration and respect for it that warms Dean a little. And, bless his heart, when he sees the photo of Mary he smiles softly and says, "Your mother was a truly beautiful woman, in so many ways," and if Dean doesn't love him a little bit for that.

The sentiment is quickly destroyed when Cas turns to him and says firmly, "Shouldn't you get dressed? The recycling won't take itself out."

-

One night, four days after Cas became human, there's a knock on Dean's bedroom door. And seeing as it's 3am and Dean is trying to catch up on about a month's worth of bad nights' sleep, he isn't best pleased.

"Dean?" comes a voice, muffled by the wood.

Of course. Of course it's Cas. Because who else would it be, really?

There's a click and the door is pushed open gently.

"Dean?" Cas whispers again, and Dean feels him step into the room. "Dean, are you awake?"

Burying himself further into the pillow, Dean growls, "No."

A beat, and then, "Oh."

For the love of God.

"Cas, does it sound like I'm fucking asleep to you?"

Apparently this equates to some sort of permission for Cas, because he's closing the door behind him and padding softly to the side of the bed. Eyes still firmly closed, Dean doesn't move. Maybe if he's lucky Cas will assume he's gone back to sleep. Then again, when has anything in Dean's life ever gone how he wanted?

Sure enough, a second later Cas murmurs, "I believe I had a nightmare."

Shifting more onto his side, Dean cracks open an eye and peers up at him through the darkness. Yep, he certainly looks paler than usual. A little clammy, too. "Go back to sleep, Cas," Dean mumbles, mostly into the pillow. "It was just a dream."

But Cas doesn't move, doesn't say anything, just stands there shivering slightly and doing an awkward little rock on the balls of his feet. Until eventually, "I can't."

Dean inhales deeply to keep himself calm. "Sure you can. You're human now, you gotta."

"No. I don't like sleeping, and I don't like being unable to control what my mind pictures when I do. My bed is unfamiliar, my room is unfamiliar. And it's so quiet, Dean. So terribly silent." If Dean hears the catch in Cas's voice, the sad little click of his throat when he swallows, he doesn't say anything. He thinks about how it must be to go from having the whole Heavenly Host crap in your head to absolute radio silence. Lonely.

Dean sighs. This is going to be a mistake and he's sure he's going to regret it in the morning, but whatever. Letting his eyes fall closed again, he blindly reaches behind him and peels back the sheets. "C'mon."

"What?" Cas says blankly, and Dean can almost picture the look on his face.

With an exhausted groan he demands, "Just get the hell in, will you?"

Cas does, hesitantly and uncertainly, as if waiting for Dean to attack him the moment he lowers the blankets over himself. When there's no sign of violence, however, he seems to relax. Dean can almost feel the tension seeping out of him and into the mattress.

Still with his back to him, Dean growls, "You tell Sam about this and I'll double-knot your shoelaces again." Because there is nothing more hilarious than watching a once Angel of the Lord struggle to untie his laces with clumsy, fumbling fingers—as Dean found out two days ago when Cas had come to him with his new shoes in hand, socked-toes wriggling, and said, "Dean, I don't know how to _do_ it."

"Deal," Cas says now, then adds softly, "Thank you, Dean."

"Yeah, yeah," Dean says roughly, but the corners of his lips twitch as he settles back down, and decides that, okay, maybe this whole 'Cas being human' thing isn't so bad, really.

-

A couple of days after that awkward 'oh crap we woke up practically cuddling okay let's pretend that never happened' moment, Cas slams his way into the kitchen, flopping into a chair across from Dean and Sam, and declares mutinously, "I hate buttons."

Dean snorts, returning to his bacon. "And a good morning to you too, Castiel; oh, me? I'm fine, thanks for asking."

"They are fiddly and time-consuming," Cas continues, sparing nothing but a brief 'if I could smite you, I would' look for Dean. "I dislike them intensely."

Sam, ever the pacifist, shrugs. "So do what Dean does—put a shirt on under your button-down, then you can leave it open."

While Cas debates the merits of this possibility, in that scrunched-up-face way that he does, Dean rolls his eyes and gets up. He spoons the remaining scrambled eggs onto a plate and shoves it in front of the ex-angel—he learned fairly early on that Cas was a bit like a pet hamster: if you didn't feed him, he wouldn't eat.

"I suppose I could," he concludes when Dean sits back down to his own breakfast. "Though I don't know how I'm expected to look presentable, anyway, when every item of clothing Dean has given me has holes."

"Well I ain't gonna give you all my best shirts now, am I?" bites Dean. Talk about ungrateful. It had taken him a whole ten minutes to rummage through his duffel and shove an armful of clothes at Cas. Conveniently, everything Sam owned was 'too big'.

" _Dean_." Cas levels him a glare and uses a finger to pointedly tug at a sizeable hole on the back of his collar.

"I'm sure we can go shopping and get you some stuff of your own, Cas," Sam smiles over the top of the newspaper he's studying. "Right, Dean?"

Dean looks between them and can't decide which is worse: Sam's 'be nice, Dean' expression or Cas's derision as he continues to pick at the frayed plaid of the shirt. He huffs a sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Oh my _god_. Fine. We'll go to Walmart or something this afternoon."

Cas looks up, surprised. "I can choose some new clothes? My very own new clothes?" And, oh god, if he doesn't sound like a child who has been promised a trip to the toy store.

"Yeah. Why not?" Dean shrugs, off-handed.

"I—Dean, thank you," Cas smiles, totally earnest, and it's the first real smile Dean has seen on his face since he fell.

Dean ignores the flush creeping up his neck and points his fork at him sternly. "Eat your eggs."

-

One of the few things that Cas _doesn't_ bitch about is cooking.

Seriously. For someone who often forgets to eat and rarely expresses any enthusiasm for anything Dean puts in front of him, Cas is strangely fascinated by watching Dean cook.

"Ah, a man after my own heart," Dean said proudly the first time Cas had taken an interest in learning to make a meal for himself, about a month after his fall.

After a particularly exhausting and violent face-off with a few demons in Arkansas, Sam had declared that they deserved a few days off before heading out again. And when Dean had woken one morning to find Cas standing at the bottom of his bed, holding out a bowl of Lucky Charms and a mug of coffee and looking so fucking endearing, Dean had decided that he would use the time to teach him to cook properly.

They were a very trying few days.

As it turned out, Cas knew the physics behind cooking very well, and could regale a vaguely-amused Dean and far-too-interested Sam (the nerd) with a hundred tales of how certain dishes were derived and where foods came from (and, huh, who woulda known that two-thirds of the world's eggplants are born and bred in New Jersey and that the Pilgrims ate popcorn at the first Thanksgiving dinner?) but when it came to practically applying the theory… well, there was something left to be desired.

But, slowly by surely, and with a great deal of frustration and disagreements and the kitchen looking like a damn disaster zone, Cas began to pick it up.

Day one wasn't great, ending with pizza dough on the walls and garlic butter in Dean's hair (god only knows how) and a burnt loaf of bread, but it was (just about) edible.

Dean had aimed lower on day two and assigned pasta, because everyone knows that pasta is the easiest thing in the world to cook, but when Cas left the heat too high and the water bubbled over the pan and the sauce congealed to the consistency of lumpy treacle, Dean was forced to rethink these assumptions.

On day three Cas had mistakenly put a tin can into the microwave and caused a minor explosion.

Significant progress was made by day four, when, after some gentle coaxing, Cas had successfully managed to make a soup starter to precede Dean's chicken main, which was actually rather enjoyable—despite the unevenly cut mushrooms and the stalk of what Sam had guessed was an apple (and just … how?), but Cas had looked so freaking proud of himself that they hadn't the heart to tell him about it.

So on day five, when Dean comes home from a grocery run to the smell of garlic and tangy spices, he inhales the air appreciatively before faltering in surprise at seeing that the fallen angel himself is the one in the kitchen. He dumps the bags down on the side before wandering over, to where an admittedly flustered Cas is messily cracking eggs into a large bowl.

"Hey, Gordon Ramsay," he teases.

"Good, you're home," Cas says roughly, barely glancing up. "I'm making meatloaf."

A snort escapes Dean involuntarily; it's all so _playing house_ , and if someone had told him six months ago that one day Cas would be making him dinner, he'd have laughed in their faces. But looking at him now, Dean's almost expecting a 'good day at the office, dear?' and wow, that's not at all disturbing.

"Aw, baby, you shouldn't have," Dean croons mockingly, eyes tracking Cas's hand as it stirs.

Only Cas rounds on him then, dropping the wooden spoon with a clatter and advancing menacingly, eyes blazing with a fury that shocks an unassuming Dean to his core. "Cas, what the hell, man?" he mutters, shaken, as Cas crowds him back against the wall.

"You do not get to call me a 'baby'," he growls, and it's then that Dean realises it isn't just anger in Cas's gaze, it's hurt. He wants to point out that Cas has completely misunderstood the context here, that it was a joke and nothing else, that he could have quite easily said 'honey' or 'sweetheart' instead, but something uncomfortable prickles in the back of Dean's brain; a memory perhaps, of a diner, years ago, and a throwaway comment that was apparently not so throwaway. "I am not a baby in a trenchcoat, or a child of any sort, even without my powers."

"Yeah, Cas, I know," Dean attempts meekly, placating, a hand gripping Cas's wrist in an effort to push him away, but Cas is immovable and still freakishly strong.

"I am still useful, Dean!" There's a kind of manic desperation etched into the lines on Cas's face now that suggests that maybe Dean has missed the point of this conversation entirely. "I require help, teaching, on many human matters that are new to me—but I am not completely inept!"

"I know," Dean says again, quieter now, more sincerely. "Cas…" But it doesn't look as if Cas has even heard him.

"I—I can be of assistance to you and Sam on hunts. I know much about the lore, about the theory. I am excellent at hand-to-hand combat. There are—there are things that I can be other than a useless tagalong who irritates you while driving and gets under your feet."

A wave of guilt crashes over Dean almost painfully. He'd be lying if he said that he hadn't secretly thought both of those things about Cas the last few weeks—but only in the heat of the moment and he'd never really meant it. Even so, he finds himself swallowing hard.

"I'm not useless," Cas murmurs, staring at his fingers twisted in Dean's shirt; it's said as a statement, and his grip is no less relentless, but Dean hears the question in it, the uncertainty.

"Hey," he says confidently, dipping his head slightly to meet Cas's eyes. "Listen to me, all right? I _know,_ Cas. You're not useless at all."

Just as Cas opens his mouth to say something, still pressed dangerously close, the timer on the oven beeps and Dean exhales in unsuppressed relief. Cas looks away, releases his iron hold on Dean, and returns to his cooking.

They don't say anything more on the subject while they eat, but Dean is a little more considerate than he would normally be and praises Cas's meatloaf highly (which actually, ain't half bad) and Cas serves him a disproportionately large slice of (shop-bought) pie afterwards, and if Sam notices anything he is smart enough not to say.

-

Six weeks after Cas's fall and they're en-route to a series-of-strange-disappearances in Red Willow County, Nebraska. Well, they're supposed to be en-route. Currently they're sitting in a roadside diner, because it's a hot day and Dean's tired and he could only take so much of Cas's complaining.

Even now, with his goddamn milkshake in front of him, Cas isn't happy. Dean frowns as Cas shifts every which way in his seat, crossing and uncrossing his legs under the table, stretching out his arms before tucking them into his sides again, tilting his chin to the ceiling before rolling his shoulders.

"Dude," Dean snaps, and even Sam looks up from the laptop. "What is _wrong_ with you?"

"I ache," Cas replies just as sharply. "My back hurts and my neck is stiff, and my right elbow is swollen. My shoes have malfunctioned and left me with a sore heel. I can't feel the index finger of my right hand because of all the shooting practice I've been doing lately, and I'm fairly certain that my left knee is creaking, Dean, _creaking_. I'm hot and uncomfortable and _sweaty_. Without my wings my balance is off and I just, ugh, I hate this."

Dean regards him for a moment and then says, "Jesus, you're a whiny little bitch lately."

"Dean!" Sam scolds, while Cas does nothing but narrow his eyes. "I hate to break it to you, Cas, but none of that is really going to go away."

"Yeah," Dean agrees. "In fact, it's probably only gonna get worse. So suck it up and drink your milk."

Cas doesn't look happy with the Winchesters' lack of useful advice, but he huffs and slides the cup closer towards him across the sticky Formica-topped table. He brings the straw to his lips and sucks in a way that should _not_ be allowed, but before Dean can interpret the sudden rush of heat pooling in his stomach, he's distracted by Cas murmuring, "I think it's my bed. My mattress is uncomfortable."

For the umpteenth time, Dean rolls his eyes. "No, Cas, it's just you being a miserable shit and not letting yourself relax ever. I'm sure your mattress is fine."

"That's easy for you to say," Cas snipes, "your mattress is infinitely preferable. I couldn't feel any springs in yours, whereas mine is—"

"Hold up," Sam interrupts, looking vaguely amused and, oh shit, Dean knows where this is going. "How do you know what Dean's mattress is like?"

Dean aims a kick at Cas's shin, but he gets there too late. "I slept on it," Cas says to Sam, matter-of-factly, then turns back to Dean all smitey and furious again. " _Ow_. Did you not _just_ hear me mention my creaky knee?"

Dean ignores him in favour of gauging Sam's reaction, who looks like he can't decide whether he wants to laugh or cry. "Do I even want to know?" he asks, a corner of his mouth twitching.

"It was nothing, Sammy. This dickwad had a bad dream and couldn't sleep, so I let him get in with me. I assure you we were both fully-clothed the whole time."

Sam snorts disbelievingly, the jerk. "Uh huh. I'm sure."

"Hey," Dean barks. "Do I have to remind you of the countless times you did the exact same thing when you were a kid? At least Cas wasn't all grabby-octopus-limbs like you were."

But Sam only laughs again, returning to his laptop with that air of a person who clearly thinks they've won an argument, and Dean stabs moodily at the pecan pie in front of him with his spoon, suddenly unable to meet Cas's eyes.

-

"I swear to God, Cas, if you slam that fucking door—"

Cas slams the door.

This is Cas's new thing, and Dean hates it. It's like living with a bratty teenager. It's been two months now, you'd think he'd have come to grips with his newfound humanity, found other ways to amuse himself besides irritating Dean. Apparently not.

Obviously upset that he can no longer make his oh-so-dramatic exits in the form of flapping wings and a light breeze, Cas has taken to storming from rooms. The worst is when there is no nearby door to slam and the stupid ex-angel takes it upon himself to knock over the nearest available object instead—which yesterday happened to be Dean's favourite mug.

So when Sam comes home from the local library where he's been doing research or some shit and finds Dean crouched down on the floor outside Cas's room and asks "Where's Cas?", Dean shrugs violently.

"Hell if I care."

He reaches into the toolbox beside him and takes out a yellow-handled screwdriver, inspecting it thoughtfully.

Sam, though, isn't finished. "Er, why are you—what _are_ you doing?"

"I'm removing Cas's bedroom door," Dean says, because clearly it's obvious and his brother is an idiot.

" _Why?_ "

"Because I'm fed up of him banging and slamming around this place, like some kid having a tantrum!"

Sam makes an exasperated noise somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. "And you're stealing his door? Don't you think you're being a bit petty?"

"No, Cas is the one being 'petty'!" Dean near yells, unscrewing a hinge with more force than strictly necessary. "Cas is the one who can't have a conversation like a freaking grown up! Cas is the one who won't talk to me anymore!"

He falls silent, his breathing laboured, and allows his hands to drop limply into his lap. "You know what? Cas can do what he likes. I don't care."

"Yeah," Sam scoffs. "You don't care. That's why you're dismantling the bunker. Because you _don't_ care."

Determined not to prove his brother right, Dean slowly twists the screw back into the hinge. Maybe this wasn't his _greatest_ idea ever. Where would he hide a door? "I've _tried_ , Sam," he murmurs, suddenly feeling exhausted. "I know this isn't easy for him, and I've tried to understand, but how am I, how are _we_ , supposed to help him if he won't let us? All the shit we've been through, everything _he_ has put us through, and he's still pushing us away? What am I supposed to do with that?"

Sam doesn't have an answer for this. He sighs instead and sinks down to the floor beside Dean, where they slip into an easy silence as Dean carefully reattaches the door. It's a shame, really, that neither of them takes it upon themselves to look over their shoulders. Because if they did, they would see a certain ex-angel loitering at the end of the corridor, his face crumpled in sadness, having heard every word they said.

-

For once, Dean's inclined to admit that perhaps the lack of communication is the root problem here. If he'd told this to his brother, Sam would probably agree.

It's not like Dean hasn't tried though, as he'd said. The first night Cas appeared on the bunker doorstep, dirty and sweaty and pale, collapsing in relief upon the sight of the Winchesters, Dean had attempted to talk to him. Between them he and Sam had half-carried half-dragged Cas into one of their many empty rooms, and when Sam had gone off to fix some soup, Dean had asked, "How did you get here?"

"Walked," Cas said resentfully, as if he never wanted to walk anywhere ever again.

Dean perched on the edge of the bed. "Did it—did it hurt?"

Cas looked at him sharply. "Falling? Yes, it _does_."

"And you're human now? One-hundred percent, bona fide human?"

There was a long pause then, where Cas exhaled heavily and let his eyes fall to the blankets over his legs. His hands twisted restlessly in his lap, fingers flexing, like they were an unfamiliar new addition to his body. Eventually he looked at Dean and said, "As human as you are."

Dean thought this was a strange answer, and he wanted to push Cas for more, like the specifics of what happened with Metatron, why Cas left them outside that church, why he came back, but before he could even open his mouth Cas had said firmly, "I would like to sleep now," and Dean knew that was the end of all conversation.

He tried again a lot over the next few days, but Cas was always 'tired' or 'can we do this later, Dean?' or 'there's nothing to tell'. And yeah, like any of those answers were ever going to appease Dean.

When Dean woke up with Cas in bed beside him (ignoring the unconscious spooning) he'd said, "Wanna tell me what your nightmare was about?"

But Cas had shrugged, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and, "I can't remember."

Dean didn't believe it for a second. "You sure about that?"

"Yes," Cas said, and climbed out of bed. "I'm going to shower."

Two days later, when Dean passed by Cas's room in the middle of the night on his way to the bathroom, he stopped when he realised the door was ajar and there was a lamp on inside. Gently, he pushed the door open and found Cas sitting with his legs crossed under him in the middle of the bed.

He was so still that Dean briefly wondered whether he'd somehow fallen asleep sitting up. But then Cas looked at him, eyes too bright, and something in his expression made Dean's stomach churn.

"You okay, man?" he asked, hovering in the doorway uncertainly.

"I am fine," Cas replied, but he didn't really look fine at all.

Dean nodded, but asked "Another nightmare?" anyway.

"No," was Cas's answer, before he crawled under the covers and flicked off the lamp. "Goodnight, Dean."

They were in Walmart, Sam pushing a cart full of clothes, when Dean tried again. Cas had been rummaging through a rack of t-shirts, puzzling at the slogan on one of them, when Dean held up a pair of artfully-scruffy jeans and said lightly, "Cas, look, these pants have holes in them too. They'll match your shirt."

Cas didn't look impressed. "Are you going to help at all?"

Dean snorted at the irony of that. He considered making a snarky comment, but the dark shadows under Cas's eyes put him off. Instead he said, with shocking sincerity, "That's all I'm trying to do, buddy."

This had made Cas look up in surprise. They held each other's gaze for a minute, until Cas looked away. "I know," he'd said, then plucked a hideous orange Hawaiian-style shirt out and asked, "What about this one?"

On their way out of a greasy diner a few days later, a pit-stop on their way to Nebraska, Dean had pulled Cas aside before he could get in the Impala and asked, "Is it your wings making you ache and stuff? Or, y'know, lack thereof?" He winced at how insensitive he sounded.

Cas looked contemplative, which made a change from his default pissy. "It doesn't help," he said eventually. "It will take some getting used to."

"Well," Dean said, "if there's anything I can do. I mean it, Cas, anything—"

"There isn't," Cas snapped, and ah yes, there was the bitter resentment Dean had grown so accustomed to. He huffed and stepped away from him, towards the car, hands held up in defeat, but Cas caught the hem of his sleeve and said, "Dean…"

For a second, Dean thought that he was going to talk, open up or whatever. He waited patiently, but in the end Cas simply looked down and muttered, "Thank you for my milkshake."

"Whatever, man," Dean sighed, and pulled his sleeve from Cas's fingers.

Dean had tried to talk about it when they were cooking, when one of those rare smiles tugged at Cas's lips. He tried to talk about it during the obsessive cleaning, and so had Sam. He even tried talking after Cas had a few beers in him, and when he was sitting quietly outside, and when they were shopping, and even, at one point, through the bathroom door when Cas was in the shower. But it didn't matter what Dean did, Cas just refused to talk. So in the end, Dean had stopped trying.

Which is why, the evening of the door debacle, the _last_ thing Dean expects is for Cas to come to him.

He's sitting on the steps outside the bunker, nursing a scotch in his cold hands, quietly seething about, well, all of it, when the door opens and Cas's head appears in the cold night air.

"I've been looking for you," he says simply, stepping outside. There are two beers in his hand.

"Huh. Come to tell me to fuck off again?" Dean snaps, but he downs the last of his scotch and takes the proffered bottle anyway, twisting off the cap.

"That depends," Cas counters contritely. "Are you going to attempt to remove my bedroom door again?"

"Your—" Realisation crashes over Dean. If Cas knows about that, then there's a good chance he also heard his conversation with Sam. " _Shit_ ," he mutters, taking such a large gulp of beer that his ears hurt.

Cas eases himself onto the step beside Dean, body all sharp lines and angles in obvious discomfort. "Indeed," he agrees.

"I dunno what to do here, man," Dean confesses quietly, and _fuck_ if he doesn't sound totally pathetic. Here he is, supposed to be the strong and healthy one taking care of his recovering-but-not-quite-there-yet brother and fallen angel, and all he can do is whine about said angel not talking to him. Even Oprah wouldn't give him the time of day.

"Neither do I," Cas says, sipping at his beer, and it's so reminiscent of their last proper conversation before all hell broke loose (though not literally this time) that Dean has to remind himself that it's _okay_ , that for the moment there is none of that sense of desperation that comes with the world ending. They're just Dean and Cas, sitting outside their house drinking beers, and tomorrow they might watch a movie, or play Scrabble (which Cas wins every damn time), or do some cooking and so on. Everything is _easy_.

Apart from this.

Cas begins to talk then. Finally, after two months of sniping and bitching and slamming doors, Cas tells the story of how he left Dean to stop Sam and ended up on their doorstep two weeks later. He quietly explains Metatron's duplicity, Naomi's demise (though he can't be certain that she's actually dead), the unbearable agony when he Fell, and the long trudge through unfamiliar terrain to get to the bunker.

It's sad, for the most part, but Dean would have to be deliberately obtuse not to pick up on the hopeful cadent to Cas's voice when he mentions walking into Kansas, knowing that he was nearly there. How he had collected a few forgotten coins along the way and lost them all to a payphone after trying and failing to remember Dean's cellphone number. That a five dollar bill was pressed into his hand by an elderly woman at a bus stop and he used it to purchase a bus ticket as far as he could in their direction. That after that he walked through the night rather than hunkering down under a tree because he simply couldn't wait any longer.

How when he walked down the track to the bunker and it came into view, for a second he'd felt like he'd come home.

And Dean doesn't know what to say to that, thinks it should be something meaningful like _this_ is _your home,_ or _you belong here with us, with me,_ or maybe even _please don't go_. But every word seems inadequate, somehow.

He twists to look at Cas, who is staring straight ahead with his damp lips parted around the neck of his bottle, deep blue eyes bright even in the darkness, soft hair brushed messily across his forehead—and Dean's hit with the terrible urge to kiss him. To press their mouths together ferociously, demandingly, all hot and fast and slick. He can see it now, tongues battling for dominance, hard chests pressed achingly together as their fingers find purchase twisted in plaid shirts and on warm skin. Kissing until their jaws hurt, until their lips are swollen and spit-slick, their knees bumping as they lean back on these concrete steps and Dean just _devours_ him. He could kiss him, he thinks. Right now, he could do it. There's a part of him that's fairly sure Cas wouldn't mind.

But he doesn't. Nor does he say anything especially profound, just the only thing he can think of in that moment.

"I'm so fucking glad you're here, Cas."

"Me too." The smile that Cas gives him is wider than Dean has ever seen, all teeth and eye-crinkles, like the fucker _honestly_ can't think of anywhere else he'd rather be, and before Dean can think it through his arms are wrapped around Cas's shoulders and he's pulling him closer and closer until they're hugging and this time Cas is hugging him back.

They stay like that for a while, longer than they should really, but it's such an immense relief just to _feel_ Cas, his warm body pressed against Dean's, so solid and real and permanent, and his hair smells like Sam's prissy strawberry shampoo and his skin smells like soap and his shirt smells like the Impala. Dean thinks about kissing again, his lips dangerously close to the soft spot behind Cas's ear, but he knows there'll be time for all that later.

For now he's content to just _breathe_.


End file.
